


Fear of the water

by Amazaria



Series: Everything is as you left it, just a little more damaged (don't worry, you've always been good at fixing things) [1]
Category: One Piece
Genre: Gen, Making friends and other things to do when you're lost and unsure, Oh look! It's the post Water 7 angst!, Post-Enies Lobby Arc, The author's insistent feelings about Franky and the meaning of home, some kind of angst
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-11-05
Updated: 2019-11-05
Packaged: 2021-01-23 20:00:56
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,277
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21325834
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Amazaria/pseuds/Amazaria
Summary: "Uh," commented Usopp. He stopped, then said, hesitatingly: "If something is too damaged, isn't it better to destroy it, though?""Look, man,"  Franky answered, sighing, "if you're waiting for me to say that what you did is irredeemable, you're going to be waiting a long time."Usopp flinched back as if he'd been hit."Isn't it, though?"(or: in which Usopp is feeling guilty, Franky is feeling homesick, and they're both scared and not opposed to making new friends.)
Relationships: Mentions of Usopp & Mugiwara Kaizoku | Strawhat Pirates, Usopp & Franky
Series: Everything is as you left it, just a little more damaged (don't worry, you've always been good at fixing things) [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1563889
Comments: 24
Kudos: 97





	Fear of the water

_" Sometimes I feel like I wanna go back,_  
_To a time before my mind turned black._  
_I miss the way it was,_

_[...]_

_Make me into more than a goner,_  
_Perhaps a little bit stronger;_  
_Thicker skin, less needy,_  
_And maybe to not bruise so damn easily._

_But you can't,_

_And I won't. "_

chloe moriondo, waves [(x)](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EyYvqlBNASM)

* * *

"Hey," said Usopp, opening the door Franky had left closed in a clear message to _not come in_.

He didn't reply, but that didn't seem to deter the sniper.

"Hey," Usopp repeated awkwardly, standing in the doorway and looking a little smaller with each passing second. "Can I- stay here?"

He _could- _as in, no part of Sunny was forbidden to anyone, except maybe the fridge to Luffy. Franky didn't especially want him to, but then apparently his opinion didn't matter much these days. 

"Sure," he shrugged from his position. Usopp took a hesitant step forward, looking over Franky's shoulder to get a look at what the shipwright was doing.

"Cool," he commented, which was an accurate, if simplistic, way of describing what Franky was trying to create. "Is it supposed to be a weapon?"

"Yeah, originally," answered Franky begrudgingly. "I ruined the powder container, though, so I'm trying to see how I can still make it work."

"Uh," commented Usopp. He stopped, then said, hesitatingly: "If something is too damaged, isn't it better to destroy it, though?"

The words had been said casually enough, but weighted so heavily on the empty room Franky did not even attempt to escape them. He thought about it, for a second, and, well-

If the question had actually been about the ruined gun Franky had been toying with for the past hour, then his answer would probably have been different; but it wasn't about the gun, or about the realm of inventing as a whole, and it was easy enough to know what answer Usopp wanted to hear.

(It was unfortunate for the sniper that Franky had stopped saying what people wanted to hear a pretty long time ago.)  


"Look, man," he answered, sighing_, _"if you're waiting for me to say that what you did is irredeemable, you're going to be waiting a long time."

Usopp flinched back as if he'd been hit.

"Isn't it, though?" He whispered, looking down and twisting his hands together like any time now, one of the other was going to throw him overboard just for existing, like everyone hadn't looked at him like he was the most incredible miracle they'd ever seen when he finally shouted his apologies, three hours ago.

Like they all didn't love him more than they loved all that they had ever valued.

(And oh, but Franky would never be able to leave them, now, would he?)

"Humans aren't machines, you know," Franky stated, feeling keenly the irony of the sentence. "It takes a lot to break them."

Usopp leaned against the wall, curling into himself.

"I never should have gotten angry," he muttered. "Chopper probably hates me. Zoro, too. And _Luffy-_"

His voice broke, like maybe there were too many emotions in it, like he couldn't bear the weight of it all, guilt and sorrow and grief and-

"But I just-," continued Usopp, lost in thoughts now, or maybe just desperate to justify his actions to someone; "We'd seen so many miracles, you know? We beat a god, we saved a country. It wasn't- it wasn't fair, to give up on her so quickly, when she had never given up on us, when we had damaged her _so much _and she still-"

And there his voice broke once again, and he was crying, and Franky wanted to be annoyed but missed and ended up empathetic.

"It's not _fair,_" stated Usopp, because it wasn't.

"For what it's worth-," said Franky, then cleared his voice when it wavered in the middle of his sentence, forced himself to take on the mindset of a shipwright and not a sympathetic bystander who had seen the sniper cry while his friend sank, and burned, and died. "For what it's worth, she never would have survived the New World. She was an East Blue ship, right? It's already a miracle she sailed so far. There was nothing you could have done."

(He was keenly aware of the fact that his poor attempt at comfort was not, in fact, worth anything.

_She was always going to die, because you decided to sail with her. _Yeah, really helpful, Franky.)

"There _was, _though. We could have taken better care of her, or reinforced her with Adam Wood, or- we did _nothing, _and now she won't sail _ever again_!"

"Well. Sometimes you just make mistakes, and you can't fix them."

It came out a little harsh, and Franky regretted it almost immediately- but the truth was that there was a train hissing in his memory, and this was a lesson he had learned too painfully to say gently.

"I _know."_ Replied Usopp, and maybe he did; maybe this just hit a little too close to home for the shipwright, this story of betraying someone's trust and hurting them and trying to do good but failing- maybe Franky was being unnecessary stern, uncharacteristically bitter, but nobody knew him here, not yet, and he missed _home._

There was a moment, or maybe an eternity, of silence, and Usopp slid down to the floor, his back against the wall, his tears dry and his face set in something scared and regretful.

"What if Luffy hates me?"

He whispered it like there wasn't anything more terrifying; like he hadn't burned down the flag of an all-powerful organization for the sake of a friend, without even being sure he could travel with her when she was free.

"What if- what if they all hate me? They should, they should, but-"

He was still staring at the floor, and Franky was staring at him.

"What if they _hate me_?" He said, and he looked lost and maybe a little desperate, like he hadn't realized that if he happened to be captured right this instant, the entire crew would storm Mariejois itself if that meant getting him back.

"They don't hate you," stated Franky decisively. "You'd know, if they did. I don't think anyone in this crew would stay silent if they hated someone."

"No, they wouldn't," laughed Usopp softly, the fondness in his voice almost unbearable. "Luffy wouldn't, anyway. Nami would probably just hit me. But Robin might, and Chopper definitely wouldn't do anything, and Zoro will just stay silent and never speak to me again, and Sanji-"

"They don't hate you, okay? They might be- mad, or hurt, but that you can fix, at least, can't you?"

(_What am I doing?, _thought Franky. _Why am I trying to comfort him? I don't know him._

And to be truthful there was a myriad of reasons, each hidden a little deeper than the previous one, each a little harder to accept than the simple ones, the generic ones, that were untouched by feelings or special circumstances.

There were several reasons why Franky was doing this.

It might have been because Franky had been a shipwright since forever; it might have been because ever since Tom had died, he had been thinking in terms of what was broken irreparably and what wasn't, and agonizing over what people could have fixed but _hadn't_; it might have been because Usopp looked so small, right now, so vulnerable, completely unlike the man who had stood on top of a tower and had declared war on Franky's worst enemies-

It might have been because Franky was so nostalgic right now, each second leading him farther away from the island he had once sworn to never leave; it might have been because he was on the ship he had dreamt of so many times, might have been because he was feeling so young and old, hopeful and full of regrets-

It might have been because there was something incredibly saddening in Usopp looking for comfort at his side, when Franky had stolen from him and beaten him until he bled and more, not _a week_ ago-

There were several reasons, but perhaps the simplest were those:

The Strawhats' loyalty to each other was nothing short of a miracle, of an anomaly, and Franky didn't want to witness it falling to pieces before him.)

"You can't just hide in there," he said, trying very hard to not think about the fact that that's exactly what he himself had been doing for the past hour.

"I can," replied Usopp. "That's what I do, hide. And run. And lie. And ruin good things, and- and- _betray people,_ apparently."

There was so much self-loathing in his voice, and the thing was, Franky wasn't sure if it was normal_. _It hit him again, that he didn't know those people, not like he knew Zambai or Kiwi, or even _Iceburg- _he had seen them fight, sure, and he knew they were good people, but he didn't know what they were like when they were arguing over trivial things, what they sounded like when they were fighting against the sea, which stories were their favorite and which they couldn't stand-

They were basically _strangers, _and hewasn't_ panicking_, okay? He just- missed home.

(He wished Sunny could have felt like home right away.

He wanted not to feel so alone in this ship that had been living in his head since as long as he could remember; he wanted to go back to building with his brother, to bickering with the rest of the Franky Family, to living with Tom; he wanted Tom _back._

Most of all, he wanted Tom back.)

"They took you back, didn't they? They still wanted you there."

And maybe Franky's bitterness had shown, there, maybe his hurt at being chased away had seeped through the cracks, because Usopp narrowed his eyes and looked at him like he had just realized something.

Franky wanted to hide, disappear, _go back home-_ he had faced the World Government not a week ago, and he would have done it again if that meant he could escape the sniper's concern, which hurt just as much as saltwater on open fractures.

"Hey, are you alright?," Usopp asked, like they weren't both hiding in a dark workshop and wondering over what they should have left alone.

"I'm fine," answered Franky, and didn't try at all to make it sound like something other than a curt dismissal.

"You don't-" said Usopp, and then swallowed whatever comment he was going to make on Franky's _perfectly stable _emotional state. He hesitated, then: "Hey, I never got to say it, but- welcome to the crew."

"Yeah," muttered Franky.

"The ship is in good hands, with you there."

"Sunny," corrected Franky. "The rest of the crew settled for "The Thousand Sunny", but I call it Sunny."

(It was _his_ dream ship. He chose the nickname.)

"Right, yeah," answered Usopp, shifting uncomfortably. "I just- didn't know the name."

"What, they didn't tell you?" Asked Franky without really thinking, and regretted it immediately when silence settled over the workshop.

"No," eventually whispered Usopp, small and hesitant, and Franky doubted his memories for an instant, couldn't understand how this boy could have stood up on the edge of the tower and screamed his defiance to the world, and still be hiding in an unfamiliar room, looking like he'd never been more terrified in his life.

(But-

This was the man that had walked into Franky's hideout and demanded his money back, arrogant in a way that must have been an act, in hindsight. This was the man who had stabbed his captain and friends in the back, who had abandoned everything he knew for a ship, for a principle, for a memory; this was the man, the boy, who had fought side-by-side with comrades he had just walked away from, and pretended to be someone else, and fooled some of his friends and had to face the ones who hadn't believed him.

He was much braver than Franky had ever been.)

They stopped talking, abruptly; the silence between them felt stilted, unstable, like something was going to give, either their attempt at friendship or the walls they had risen so high each of them had just ended up trapped with their regrets.

"I really don't think they hate you, you know. They were so happy when you came back- I don't think they're the type to fake that."

"No, not really," muttered Usopp. "They don't hate me, but-" He let his arms rise then fall to the ground, like he had wanted to gesture towards something and had realized at the last moment it wasn't here.

"But?"

"But I hurt them. I don't know how to face them."

(And here Franky had enough advice to give to last at least an hour, but he had spent most of his life refusing to face Iceburg, and it would have been too hypocritical for himself, or for anyone, probably.)

"Yeah," he just said. "You'll have to do it eventually, though. You can't avoid them forever."

"I know," answered Usopp miserably. He had settled for wrapping his arms around his knees; one of his hands was clutching his knees, and its knuckles were white. "I know, but- later, okay? I'll do it later."

And he wasn't going to do it, and they both knew it; but Franky hummed an agreement and went back to his gun, and Usopp went back to his regrets; and a comfortable silence settled over the workshop that Franky had thought up until now was going to be his and his only.

**Author's Note:**

> They're friends and I love them
> 
> (Title taken from SYML's eponymous song, "Fear of the Water". It has nothing to do with the fic, I just like how it sounds)


End file.
